Laughing In The Rain
by Liralen Li
Summary: Hakkai snaps. Sanzo has to not only stop him, but give him some hard answers to finally calm him down. There are no slash or yaoi implications in this one.


_Author's Note  
Prompts for this were "thinks I'll get shot for this one" and "I'm only happy when it rains." from lj's "mysocalledhell". You had to make it this HARD. Mysocalledhell said, after she got it, that it really does fit Garbage's song "I'm Only Happy In The Rain", which is where her prompt comes from. I listened to it after the comment, and I think it really fits. So if you want music to go with this fic, that's the song.  
_

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Sanzo sat and smoked a cigarette out in the hallway. His back was to a wall that couldn't muffle the sounds of the meticulous, methodical, and continual destruction of what must have been everything in Hakkai's room. The crashes, thumps, and bone-crunching thuds couldn't hide the slow hiss of rain pouring down outside.

He was tired. His belly scars twinged, his joints ached, his head hurt, and his stomach still growled as he had been too nauseous to eat at all since they'd gotten back.

Sanzo closed his eyes and even behind his eyelids he could still see the freshly eviscerated body. Gojyo had heaved and threw up the moment he saw, and Sanzo was so busy trying to keep Goku from seeing that neither of them had noticed Hakkai, at first. The quiet black-haired man had just stood there.

Then, deliberately, Hakkai had set off after the killers. He hadn't moved that fast to start, so the other three hadn't gone after him immediately, but when Sanzo had managed to get Goku skirted around the body, all three of them realized something was wrong. It had been the screaming.

By the time they'd caught up, there was nothing but bloody pieces, and the warm, wet monsoon rains for the day started coming down.

Gojyo and Goku watched Sanzo from their room. The stupid monkey had that look in his golden eyes that really believed that Sanzo could fix anything, make it right.

Gojyo's face was different. Sanzo could see his glances between him and each thud and smash coming from the room behind him. His concern for both of them grated on Sanzo's already stretched nerves, grated nearly as badly as the rain did. He really, really didn't want to face an angry Hakkai. But the sounds were only escalating, not calming down.

The innkeeper came and looked at Sanzo in the hallway and then looked at the sounds from the room. Sanzo waved his gold card and the innkeeper nodded and said, "I'll have to tally it up after you leave, but I got the number. I've gotta deal with my brother-in-law so it shouldn't be too bad."

There was the sound of something big being ripped away from the wall, possibly the headboard, and then the shattering of glass as if Hakkai had thrown it through the window.

"Very..." Both of them winced as a chair leg came through the wall. "Kind of you, I'm sure." Sanzo bared his teeth in something that had no resemblance to a smile. "I'm sure it'll be nice to have a new room."

The innkeeper simply nodded. "Should be." And he walked away.

Sanzo sighed and got to his feet. It was like jumping into cold water. Better to just do it and be done.

He tried the door and the knob turned, no problem. He just walked in, ducked the chair coming at him as a reflex action, jumped to the side as a different chunk of wood flew through the air towards him, and a peculiarly eerie sound of animal pain made him bring the gun up just as Hakkai rushed him.

As Sanzo brought his banishing gun up, he thought that if he killed Hakkai now, all of them would be dead within the week. As he saw Hakkai's green eyes through the sights he thought, _If he's distracted or gone insane enough for me to kill him, we're all dead anyway._

He moved his finger to the trigger and squeezed. Hakkai blurred.

Sanzo hit the wall just as his bullet hit the far wall, touching nothing else between. Hakkai was on his knees, arms wrapped around Sanzo's waist and instead of tearing him in half as he nearly expected, Hakkai just clung to him. He suddenly realized that that horrible sound he had reacted to was... of all things... laughter.

Harsh, pained, sobbing laughter poured from Hakkia and put icicles up Sanzo's spine.

"Heeheehehheh isn't it funny? I was happy in the rain." Hakkai laughed some more. "I'm still alive. Why, oh great Sanzo Priest of the temple? Why the fuck am I still alive when she's dead _that_ way, they're bloody dead again, and the rain keeps trying to wash me clean, wash me into the river, wash me back to nothing, but I keep breathing?! They were innocent compared to me. They didn't... did they deserve this? Deserve _me_ coming down on them? It's like a huge hellish joke and I never get the punch line..."

Sanzo contemplated the babbling and just backhanded Hakkai.

Hakkai blinked, and then gently touched his reddened cheek. "Aren't you supposed to do the other one, too?" he asked mildly.

Sanzo obliged.

Now green eyes calmed, settled and looked at Sanzo. Then, in his normal voice, calm and quiet again, "Answer me, priest."

"Why? You just about left me with the guilt of killing you and without your help. You just cost me the price of an entire hotel room. You've scared the fuck out of the brat and that pervy kappa, and you demand an answer of _me_?" Sanzo let himself finally be really pissed off after being so fucking frightened.

But this was Hakkai, always calm in the face of his anger. "Yes. Answer me why. Tell me why I live when I don't deserve to and they all... all of them are dead."

"The gods save no one," came to Sanzo's mouth as easily as breath. "You know that."

Hakkai's nostrils flared. "That's just a pat saying. That doesn't answer me."

"I fucking can't..." Tight fingers around his waist stopped Sanzo and he took a deep breath. "Hakkai... no one deserves... to live or to die. It's not about worth or what anyone deserves or not. Look at it without your expectations, without your illusions, your assumptions. The truth is that those safe arms, those soft lips, that wealth of hearth and home, can all just scatter like so many flower petals in the wind. It's all nothing, an illusion that all those supposedly happy people lose themselves to. Nothing that can be held onto, nothing that can be kept, and certainly nothing _deserved_."

"That's bullshit. What I had with Kanan was real, was warm, was..."

"... was ripped from you in an instant." Sanzo said, implacably. "Not yours. Not yours to keep. Not yours to hold. Something you could not protect. Any more than anyone is, than we are."

Long hands clenched tight around bruises, ripped knuckles tore open just a little wider, and Hakkai took a long, shuddering breath.

The rain hissed and spattered, the splashing from the gutters full of water was clear to both of them. Sanzo's memories poured over him as well, the blood, the loss, the utter grief of losing what he had been unable to protect, and the rush of the rain falling outside.

"So are you saying that it's only possible to be happy in the rain?" Hakkai asked as calmly as the puddle that formed under the now permanently-open window to his room. His own blood dripped quietly from the gashes, the cuts the youkai or the glass or the furniture in the room had made on him.

Sanzo shook his head, "I'm not quite that stupid. But... it does make it easier to see the truth, easier to be yourself without the crutches and illusions others would have you lean on."

"I don't... like that answer," Hakkai said. "I'd rather believe in the illusion."

"Wouldn't we all," Sanzo said as he pulled a cigarette from a battered damp pack and lit up. Then he lightly laid his hand on Hakkai's head. "Wouldn't we all."


End file.
